Audio 2:13
Coral sperm bank to reseed reef

Allyson HornUpdated
Mon 2 Dec 2013, 10:30 AM AEDT

Researchers on the Great Barrier Reef are cryogenically freezing coral sperm to stop some of the animal species from becoming extinct. They've set up the sperm bank so in years to come they can resew coral spawn back into the Reef.

Transcript

TONY EASTLEY: Researchers on the Great Barrier Reef are freezing coral sperm to stop some of the animal species from becoming extinct.

They've set up the sperm bank so in years to come they can resew coral spawn back into the damaged reef.

Allyson Horn reports from Townsville.

ALLYSON HORN: Dr Rebecca Spindler from the Taronga Zoo has joined with researchers from across the globe to embark on a bold plan to stop coral species from becoming extinct.

Dr Mary Hagedorn from the Smithsonian Institute trialled the process in Hawaii.

DR MARY HAGEDORN: I had been developing this technology in the United States and had successfully cryo-preserved coral sperm and embryonic cells there. But we thought that we could now start to actively apply this in terms of conservation in Australia and have it impact on the Great Barrier Reef.

ALLYSON HORN: Throughout the last fortnight, the researchers have collected billions of coral sperm during the annual spawning season. The sperm has been cryogenically frozen using liquid nitrogen.

DR MARY HAGEDORN: We put them into cyro-tubes, and then we float them on a little sort of lake of liquid nitrogen that freezes them at about 20 degrees per minute, down to minus-196. And then we immerse them in liquid nitrogen and then put them in a dry shipper.

ALLYSON HORN: The coral gene bank will be stored at the Western Plains Zoo in outback New South Wales, under the watch of Dr Spindler.

DR REBECCA SPINDLER: We fell in love with the coral work straight away, and I think then what we were able to provide was a really consistent, very good and secure way of keeping that coral forever.

ALLYSON HORN: Some of the sperm will stay there for hundreds, perhaps even thousands, of years. Other sperm is already being used to help fertilise new coral and replenish the reef.

DR REBECCA SPINDLER: The traditional idea of a gene bank is that you store cells down and that you keep forever, unless some really catastrophic thing happens out in the wild.

That's not what we want from this bank at all. We could potentially reseed that reef and make the entire system more resilient to the bigger changes coming down the pipe.